A top executive at the Motion Picture Association plans to urge lawmakers on Wednesday to pursue legislation to combat piracy through court-ordered site blocking, something major studios believe is necessary to prevent infringements that occur outside the U.S. jurisdiction to prevent this from taking place.
The MPA wants legislation that would allow content companies to seek a court order requiring internet service providers and other intermediaries to disable access to an infringing site.
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“We urge Congress to consider reasonable and tailored no-fault enforcement measures as a proven way to combat digital piracy and its negative impact on the creative industries and our economy as a whole,” said Karyn A. Temple , MPA senior executive vice president and Global General Counsel, said her prepared remarks before a House subcommittee.
The anti-piracy measure may sound familiar: More than a decade ago, studios pushed for similar elements in House legislation known as the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, along with a companion Senate bill. The bills initially received bipartisan support, until a backlash, fueled by Google and other major internet companies, led to an unprecedented online outcry, including site blackouts and warnings that the law would restrict internet freedom. Lawmakers sidelined the legislation amid opposition, a moment that underscored the growing lobbying power of big tech companies.
A lot has changed since then. Google, Meta, and Amazon have only grown in size, as has their lobbying power, but they are also under scrutiny from the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission. Lawmakers in Congress have railed against the power of big tech, even as key privacy and antitrust legislation has failed to move forward.
The MPA believes the warnings against SOPA were exaggerated, and they point to other countries that have implemented site blocking without “breaking the internet,” as one official put it. Countries including the United Kingdom, Australia, Singapore and France allow courts to issue site blocking orders, as do Spain, Denmark and France, Temple said.
“Those countries that have not implemented erroneous orders to disable access to structurally infringing websites have shown through clear evidence and several years of data that this remedy is effective in reducing visits to blocked piracy sites and causing users to change their behavior change and migrate to legal sites. , paid VOD services,” Temple said in her written comments.
Temple also explained how a no-fault regime works: Instead of suing a piracy site, many of which operate outside U.S. jurisdiction, a copyright holder seeks an injunction against intermediaries, such as Internet service providers, who could restrict access to the site. infringing materials. ISPs, hosting providers, domain name system providers, content delivery networks, payment processors, social networks and search engines must “take a much more active role in ensuring that their services are not used to facilitate the activities of these criminal organizations,” Temple said. .
Temple said intermediaries would not be subject to the orders because “they are involved in misconduct, but only because they are in a position to mitigate the infringement.” They also cannot be held liable or harmed by the copyright owner. Rights holders would also have to prove in court that a site is “devoted to copyright infringement.”
Temple also said such injunctive relief should come with due process protections, including reporting the alleged piracy sites and allowing intermediaries to fight a court order. The court, she said, would take into account the “potential burden on the intermediaries and whether disabling access to the site will have a negative impact on both parties (including, for example, the public’s interest in access to -infringing material).”
A Google spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment. Matthew Schruers, president of the Computer and Communications Industry Association, which has opposed court blocking in the past, also plans to testify at Wednesday’s hearing. Richard Gladstein from FilmColony can also be seen.
The hearing focuses on digital copyright piracy and will take place in the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet.
There is no site blocking bill on the table, and in the world of DC lobbying, the best bet is that Congress will do nothing. In addition to privacy and antitrust legislation, lawmakers have yet to resolve the two-decade battle over net neutrality, leaving it to a see-saw of FCC orders and rollbacks depending on the administration.
In the wake of SOPA, the MPA and other content groups retreated for a time from lobbying for major anti-piracy legislation and instead sought cooperative agreements with Internet service providers, payment processors, and advertisers. The studios scored a major legislative victory in 2020 when Congress included a measure to criminalize operating an illegal streaming service in a year-end funding bill. Google, once a major enemy of entertainment industry lobbyists, was even praised by MPA chairman Charles Rivkin last year. He wrote that Google has “removed a substantial number of piracy-related domains from search results in these countries to effectively enforce court orders requiring ISPs to block access to piracy sites.”
Temple argued that in countries where site blocking exists, there is a “good balance between protecting copyright against those who seek to profit from piracy, and respecting the rights of those affected by blocking orders, including accused offenders, intermediaries and the public. in general.”
She cited a 2019 study from Carnegie Mellon that found that blocking sites in countries like Britain, Australia, Portugal and South Korea reduced traffic to pirated domains and also increased traffic to legitimate sources. The MPA provides funding to Carnegie Mellon’s Initiative for Digital Entertainment Analytics, but the study’s author said the research was “conducted independently without
any supervision or editorial control.”
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